I have been Photolab user since version 6 on desktop PC. Now I am considering to get an Apple laptop to edit on the go, but still continue to use PC as main editing computer. All the raw and dop files would be shared using NAS drive system to both. It seemed to me like a good idea until I saw this page saying that the dop files are not compatible for Windows and Mac.
Is it the whole truth, or are they compatible if running same version of Photolab on each? I do not understand how a propietary file format for Photolab can be incompatible. It seems to store the applied edits that have been done in a structured textual format. Are the edits themself incompatible or what is the reason?
A few years ago, DxO made .dop sidecars capable of being used on both Mac and Win platforms.
Now it seems that PhotoLab versions have drifted from each other just enough for DxO to add the statement mentioned above.
Exchange still works (!), but looks might get too different which makes a mixed platform environment counterproductive.
Let’s hope that DxO will remedy this issue soon.
(!) Note that we often get images and sidecars from “the other” platform. So far, I never had the impression that looks were off or uncorrectable. Nevertheless, the statement needs to be taken into account.
Indeed for instance the watermark filepath is in the dop file. But that would make it incompatible for another PC as well if the path is not available.
Which indeed is the case. But Mac and Win have slightly different syntax for filenames, e.g. there’s no “drive” part in Mac, treatment of “\” and “/” is also different. That said, DxO could have made some effort to provide some compatibility. AFAIK, syntax and semantics of all numerical parameters is the same for Mac and Win, but perhaps someone who uses both OSes can provide credible info.
Here’s a MAC sidecar of “No Correction” for those who want to have a look with a text editor. Note that the number of spaces per tab was set for viewing and can be changed. Also, alphabetical sorting seems to be irrelevant. 20071103_R_1571.cr2.dop (12.4 KB)
I’ve been going back and forth between Mac and Win since PL1, and it’s only been absolute paths written to dop (DCP, LUT, etc) that have been problematic in practice. Who knows what’s going to happen in the future given the blurb pointed at above, but that information is inconsistent with the information in the User Guide (that promises more than PL delivers), and paths have been an issue since DCP support was added in PL2 (maybe longer, wasn’t there similar ICC support in PL1 already?), so it may well take another 7+ major releases before we have any clarity from DxO on the matter.
This is not a difficult problem for DxO to solve (let files be placed in a directory known to PL on each platform, write filenames rather than absolute paths for files in these directories), so it’s difficult to understand their reluctance to address it. Making it difficult/impossible to migrate work done in PL between different hosts is hardly a selling point.
Anything that lives only in the database (eg. Projects, Stacks) is also a problem. I just avoid these features.
I’ve been doing this for years, and it’s worked fine as long as I avoid the features that write absolute paths to dop. The page you point at is relatively new I think, and the User Guide still says dop can be used for interchange, so I’m not convinced DxO is planning to give it up. That would be a major own goal IMO.
…which means to limit oneself to classical features rather than being able to use the “new stuff”.
And what’s more is, that PL is in no way prepared for use on more than one computer anyways. There is nothing that is able to sync databases, be it in a mixed or non-mixed OS environment.
For PL10 to be a perfect ten, DxO would need to address such topics - including maintenance to make PL more reliable, resilient and in tune with what’s actually on a drive, just to mention one group of items.
But now, DxO’s resources are bound by having to handle redundant products plus AI and I’m afraid that DxO will not be able to turn around on its way deeper into the bog.
I don’t have high hopes that DxO will change their tune and start fixing issues like this. The ones we’ve mentioned (and more) have been around for years.
PhotoLab is a great editor that can export very nice raster files, but as a tool for managing an image archive over time there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
Hope can be deceiving and in relation to features of anything DxO, it’s probably best to comment findings, list requests and move on.
Making PL Win compatible with PL Mac would still be a very good move imo. Asking people to bind themselves not only to an app but also to a platform reminds me of IBM strategies of >30 years ago. Who’s talking about IBM now?
I would like that DxO uses a standard json format for top files and not a bastard !
I have tried to read dop files, for extracting informations, with standard json commands but I was obliged to use more complicated regex.
Actually JSON is a “sub-bastard” of JavaScript, which is used in DOP. You may use for example Notepad++ with a JSFormat plugin to convert to standard JSON.
